1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a polling system and, more particularly, to a system and method for enabling a user to create and post polls on a microblogging website that can be answered on the microblogging website.
2. Description of the Background Art
Microblogging has become increasingly more prevalent in today's technologically interconnected world. Microblogging can take the form of traditional blogging, where microbloggers post about topics that concern them from what they did that day to their views on subject matters of import. Commercial microblogs may promote websites, services, or products or encourage interactivity with the organization. Microblogs may operate through a web-based interface, through text messaging, instant messaging, email, or digital audio.
One example of a microblogging system is TWITTER. TWITTER allows its users to send and read text-based posts, or “Tweets,” that contain 140 characters or less. A user can follow (or be followed by) other users on TWITTER, which means that the user subscribes to the other user's Tweets. While the user may ask a question in his or her Tweet to jumpstart a conversation about a certain subject matter among his or her followers, there is currently no system in place for processing the responses that the user receives and providing feedback to the general community (or at least to the user's followers) within TWITTER.
Currently, if a user wants to take a poll and have the answers compiled into poll results, a user posts or “tweets” a link to a poll on an external website (i.e., outside TWITTER or other microblogging systems). If followers of the user click on the link to take the poll, they are taken to the external website. The user's followers may then have to search for the poll on the external website. Sometimes, the followers even have to register on the third party website before they can take the poll. All of this is inconvenient and decreases the likelihood that followers will actually participate in a poll. Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for enabling a user to create and post polls on a microblogging website, such as TWITTER, that can be answered without leaving the microblogging website.